BEAUTY of a VESSEL

"The beauty of the vessel is its contents." Dan Stone

Consider a floral bouquet, perhaps one you'd give a friend, mother, or sister on a holiday or "just because." Consider the colors that complement and support each other, the greens that offset the vibrancy, and the vessel or vase that holds it all together. 

When I see arrangements, I don't admire the vessel first. I admire the contents - the flowers. And then my eyes drift and I become inspired by the sheer radiance of the complete picture of the bouquet. 

So it goes with our Heavenly Father and His Son. For those of us that are believers, we contain the most precious content: the Life of Jesus Christ. We have received the most precious gift: the Life of Jesus Christ. Now we are vessels that contain a radiant bouquet of Life. 

Consider your humanity for a second, when you became a follower of Christ, God didn't take away your personality, temperament, laughter, sense of humor, or past experiences. He might have allowed them to be tempered or mellowed, and surely He brought healing to painful memories.  But God left YOU - He made a new identity (your spirit core), a new vessel, that He could attach His Son to, that there might be a new source of life. But he chose not to remove YOU (the train of thoughts you think, the things that make you laugh, the patterns of your will), the vessel, and make another Son of God to walk around this earth. He kept YOU and made your source of Life to be Jesus Christ. It's some-kind-of-divine interdependent partnership. Your humanity is an Asset to God - He needs the vessel to carry the contents of His Son, so that He might get more glory.  

And as the vessel begins to identify itself more (ongoing sanctification) and more with the contents it carries, the beauty increases.

When I consider some of the most beautiful women I know or the most handsome men I know, the beauty comes directly from the Source. They vessels, these radiant people, cannot possibly contain the entirety of the contents-so the contents and fruit just OVERFLOW beyond the vessel itself. The profound thing about these individuals, or any of the individuals you might know, is that they RECEIVED the Contents, and are willingly bearing these contents, no matter the cost. But the thing you will notice, if you look, is that there is glory to God. The beauty of these vessels are the contents they are carrying.

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." 

2 Corinthians 4:7

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 

2 Corinthians 5:17